Is Satan evil?

[Ryantology]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder about this.

Surely, a believer will immediately answer LAWD YES, and I have no doubt some of our resident apologists will attempt to construct a turgid lattice of Bible verses to 'prove' that he is, but history is written by the winners, and Satan lost his rebellion against God. If Satan and Lucifer are the same guy, I dunno. Most people seem to think so, and I'm going with it.

What makes Satan a bad guy, though? I think he is the bad guy primarily because he opposes the designated good guy, because there really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of direct villainy attributed to him. Most of it seems to involve blaming everything bad, ever, on this one being, without any real substantiation. He's bad because God said so, for the most part.

Yet, if you compare him to God objectively, it is impossible to suggest that Satan is worse. God is the one who orders, or directly causes, mass slaughters, torture, rape, slavery, mass destruction, infanticide, pestilence, and so on. What does Satan do? Well, for the most part, he doesn't seem to do anything except 'tempt'. Hell, the only time he kills anyone, he does it because God told him to. It may not have even been Satan in the book of Job. In any case, ten deaths is nothing compared to God's body count, which is in the billions and is often done with exceptional cruelty and malice. It is God, not Satan, who commands total devotion and love and punishes those who don't give it with an extended stay in a holocaust Disneyland.

This is not to say that Satan is a good guy, but God is infinitely worse in every conceivable way. If one is not brainwashed into believing tautological nonsense like "God is good because God says God is good", God comes across as a hideously evil monster with fantastic PR and Satan, at worst, is an antagonistic trickster who has been made out to be the destructive evil force that God actually is.

[Something completely different]

Who`s satan?

There are many.

[Confused Ape]

If Satan and Lucifer are the same guy, I dunno.

There's a very complicated history of why Satan and Lucifer came to be regarded as the same guy.

Lucifer (pron.: /ˈluːsɪfər/ or /ˈljuːsɪfər/) is the King James Version rendering of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל in Isaiah 14:12. This word, transliterated hêlēl or heylel, occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible and according to the KJV-influenced Strong's Concordance means "shining one, morning star, Lucifer".[1] The word Lucifer is taken from the Latin Vulgate,[2] which translates הֵילֵל as lucifer,[3][4] meaning "the morning star, the planet Venus" (or, as an adjective, "light-bringing").[5] The Septuagint renders הֵילֵל in Greek as ἑωσφόρος[6][7] (heōsphoros),[8][9][10] a name, literally "bringer of dawn", for the morning star.[11] Kaufmann Kohler says that the Greek Septuagint translation is "Phosphoros".[2]

The light bringer idea might have inspired naming a type of match as lucifer matches.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you've a Lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.

[The Magic Pudding]

Would you mind if I use "turgid lattice of Bible verses" as a username sometime. Sometime I'm bored and wandering.

Satan can be evil but if you keep her off the red wine and rum she's not so bad.

[The Grand Nudger]

"I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the verdict." -Mark Twain

[PyroManiac]

In my opinion, they aren't.

I believe they are 2 different people, 2 different personalities, just in the same body.

[Drich]

As you have demonstrated in this thread it is all a matter of perspective. Meaning if you do not love God or respect is expressed will then what God deems as evil is where you want to be. For anything not in the expressed will of God is a sin. Evil is an intense desire that usually manifests itself in physical action that places one far outside of God's expressed will.

[The Grand Nudger]

Good, glad its a matter of perspective. Since it's a matter of perspective, the rest of your post falls into the category of pious drivel. I'm willing to propose, with complete confidence, that the punctuation marks in the sentences above hold more insight into the nature of "evil" than what's been wedged between them.

[LastPoet]

Like in any history, there is the good guy and the bad guy. In a nutshell that is all about it.

[Minimalist]

The light bringer idea might have inspired naming a type of match as lucifer matches.

Could also be merely a thinly disguised rip off of the Prometheus myth, too. Prometheus was chained to a rock and condemned to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day for bringing fire to man.